Description

In 2015, the United Nations adopted the SDGs that challenged the global community to reduce poverty and increase the health and well-being of all people. Particularly, goal 6 aims at ensuring access to water and sanitation for all by 2030, with specific objectives such as achieving universal and equitable access to safe and affordable drinking water for all, improving water quality by reducing pollution, eliminating dumping and minimizing release of hazardous chemicals and materials, and also by halving the proportion of untreated wastewater and substantially increasing recycling and safe reuse globally.

Developing access to sanitation services poses technical, institutional, financial and also social and cultural challenges. Major obstacles relate to governance deficiencies, especially the lack of adequate institutional framework. Other hindrances include the weak priority given to sanitation and the insufficiency of substantial investment in the sector. Besides investment, sustainable solutions should also adequately address the other dimensions, especially institutional and financial aspects. It is thus essential to implement sustainable institutional arrangements ensuring the setting up of a political anchor for the sanitation sector as well as responsiveness to the demand, transparency and accountability to users, financial sustainability, and the involvement of all the actors in their area of expertise.

It is on the basis of these needs that UNITAR has developed the e-learning course Governance in Urban Sanitation.

Course objective

To enhance the capacity of local decision-makers and sanitation professionals to make the most enlightened decisions and investments in the area of urban sanitation. Additionally, it provides analytical tools to understand the financial and institutional framework of the sanitation sector, taking into account the needs of urban poor communities.

Content

Module 1: Introduction to Sanitation

Module 2: Economics, Pricing and Financing of the Sanitation Sector

Module 3: Institutional Aspects of the Sanitation Sector

Module 4: Sanitation and Poverty

Module 5: Sanitation and Climate Change

The course is composed of 5 modules that are covered in a period of 10 weeks, corresponding to about 50 hours learning time. On average the course requires 5 hours of study time per week.